Rome’s narrow, often moped-choked Via di Monserrato runs parallel to the Tiber River, not far from the Campo de’ Fiori, the open-air fruit market where rogue Dominican Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. Along this ancient route, an elegant — though unassuming by Roman standards — archway containing a carved wooden door forms the entrance to the Venerable English College, where men have been formed for the Catholic priesthood since 1579.
Inside the walls of the college, the pleasant catastrophe known as Rome ceases, and a fastidious British charm prevails. Another layer of the great artichoke of the Eternal City reveals itself: that of the national seminaries, houses for priestly formation for young men from Catholic countries — or, in this case, a formerly Catholic country — beyond Italy.
“In addition to the presence of the Holy See, the formation of priests is one of the most important things going on in Rome, a secret that you know if you’re a student here,” Father Stephen Wang, rector of the Venerable English College, told Our Sunday Visitor.
Casting fire on the earth
The college boasts a theological library well stocked with ancient and modern texts and an ornate chapel, extensively updated in the reign of Queen Victoria. The observant visitor to the chapel will note that nearly all of its art is devoted to a single subject: martyrdom.
The centerpiece is a monumental 1583 oil painting by Durante Alberti that predates the chapel’s Victorian aggiornamento. In it, representations of the Father and the Holy Spirit present the body of the crucified Son, from which blood flows onto a globe, setting orange blazes while martyred saints look on. This is a visual representation of the college’s motto: Ignem veni mittere terra, “I am come to cast fire on the earth” in the English of the Douay-Rheims Bible (Lk 12:49).
On the balcony that encircles the chapel, more paintings depict the entire history of the English Church through martyrs, beginning with St. Peter in Rome and concluding with the college’s own alumni. Forty-four of them were martyred in the first 100 years after the seminary was founded in 1579 to accommodate the young men spilling over from England’s Catholic seminary in exile at Douay, France (where the Douay-Rheims translation of the Scriptures was produced).
It was the reign of Elizabeth I, and Catholicism, particularly the priestly ministry, was outlawed.
“When a man came here to study, Elizabeth’s spies would try to sketch pictures of him from the street, and they would arrest him when he reached England,” Father Wang said. The seminarians assumed precautionary new identities, taking their mother’s maiden name as their last name.
Notable martyred alumni include Jesuit saints Henry Walpole and Robert Southwell, the latter whose feast is celebrated Feb. 21. Southwell, a poet and prose writer, is considered to be a Catholic counterpart to the Anglican metaphysical poets John Donne and George Herbert. Some scholars hold that he was a literary influence on William Shakespeare.
From martyrdom to New Evangelization
It is an irony of history that the mother seminary at Douay, France, returned to England during the French Revolution, when Catholic seminary formation was outlawed in France. But the Venerable English College remained in Rome.
Today’s seminarians complete a period of discipleship over the first two years before renewing their commitment to becoming a priest. They then study theology and philosophy at the Gregorian and the Angelicum, run by the Jesuits and the Dominicans, respectively. They are a diverse bunch, says Father Wang, with some coming from large, devout families while others are converts with little to no Catholic background.
The England in which these men will minister is no longer the ruthless Protestant state run by Elizabeth I, but missionary territory in the New Evangelization, where the mission work is often carried out by priests and religious who are themselves immigrants to the United Kingdom (as are most of the seminary’s students). Yet the orderly, quiet halls of the Venerable English College and its chapel decked with representations of grisly torture serve as a reminder that the flower of the Faith blooms mainly when watered with the blood of martyrs.
